Lau AlexandraMy laugh has gotten me into trouble more times than I can count. When I find something to be hilarious, I won’t just laugh about it for a minute and move on. I’ll continue to think back to it after everyone else has gotten over it, and start giggling again…and again.
It probably comes as no surprise that this stellar trait didn’t exactly go over well in school. I may not have been the class clown, but I was still laughing at what the class clown did long after the teacher had calmed everyone down and gotten the class back on task.
This continued past high school and into grad school, too. I met an incredible group of people there who I’m still extremely close with, and our friend Alex is one of the funniest humans I’ve ever met. At least once a day in class he would say a comment or make some sort of facial expression that had the rest of us dying. I have a memory of myself and my friend Candice gripping the sides of our desks so tightly to keep from laughing out loud that the desks were actually shaking. Needless to say, I got some looks from my professors over those two years. Oops.
Laughter is something that I- now a teacher myself- need to be cognizant of with my students. I pride myself on having a really fun classroom dynamic, and we do laugh a lot in my classes. In my experience, that’s been essential to increasing student motivation year-round. However, there are times when I need to calm my kids down to move on, and I DO get frustrated with those who are still laughing when it’s really, really time to get back on task. It’s easy to forget sometimes that those kids are, well…me.
Through this, I’ve also been able to put myself in my former teachers’ shoes. I now understand why they would give me looks or call me out for laughing. Keeping twenty-something twelve and thirteen-year olds on task for forty straight minutes is not easy! They’re silly, quirky, hormonal, inquisitive…which makes for some really great days, and some really challenging days. But even on those challenging days, when I really think about it, I’m grateful for their laughter. There are moments when they have me in stitches- I can’t make up half of the hilarious times I’ve had over the last nine years.
So, I guess that means that even when it’s frustrating me, the laughter’s gotta stay. I know I’m personally gonna keep on laughing, even if it gets me in trouble from time to time. Without laughter, life’s just dull.
‘til next time,
Lau
